


The Only Way Through

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Post-Episode: s02e19-20 Twilight of the Apprentice, Reunions, the skywalker family tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 11:26:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7799950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The past isn't done with Ahsoka yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Way Through

Ahsoka glares at the flashing lights on the steering console and swears loudly when a sharp thump with her fist doesn't fix the problem.

The ship reverts to real space and she braces herself, annoyed and rueful. She's survived too much to die like this, in a stolen Imperial ship that is apparently falling apart at the seams, but the Force is with her, because there's nothing nearby--no ships, no moons, no unexpected stars or black holes or gravity wells to swallow her up.

She sighs in relief and sinks back into the pilot's seat, letting the tension leach from her shoulders and breathing her fear into the Force. She gives herself a couple of moments to relax and savor the feeling of not being dead yet, and then she gets to work. 

*

She's not sure how much time she spends making repairs; they're stopgap at best, but they'll get her somewhere she can land, or at least crash, because she's not going to take anything for granted at this point. She's pretty good at crash landings; she learned from the best. 

And that's not a useful thought--she knows better than to dwell on the past, especially since it tried so recently to kill her--so she lets it go and focuses on making connections and getting the navigation system back online. Once she's got it running and plugged into the main computer, it starts spitting out possible destinations. Well, one possible destination, given the amount of fuel on board and the state of her sublight engines. 

She looks at the readout and laughs under her breath. Joke's on her. It looks like the past isn't done with her yet.

*

Tatooine doesn't change. The intervening years might never have happened, going by the look of Mos Eisley. Ahsoka carries them with her, though; she's no longer that naive, eager to please girl. She's always been her own agent of change. It's part of why she'd chosen the code name Fulcrum when she'd joined Bail's rebellion. 

A street urchin tries to pick her pocket as she moves through the market, and when she catches the girl's wrist in her hand, the bones feel light and fragile as a bird's. 

"Here," she says, pressing several coins of local currency--a small fortune, if she's calculated correctly--into the girl's palm. "Find yourself some food and a safe place to sleep tonight."

The girl stares up at her with squinting, suspicious eyes, but takes off without a sound. At least someone on this rock will eat well today, she thinks, and since the thought of eating makes her stomach rumble, she buys herself some kind of mysterious grilled meat on a stick. The spices blot out the gamy taste--apparently everything on this planet is scorching, including the food--and the lingering burn sends her into the darkness of a cantina looking for a drink to quench the fire in her throat.

*

It's easy to read significance into everything. Obi-Wan had cautioned her against it early on, reminding her that though the Force guided them and they followed its will, not everything was about them, and though they might be at the center of one event, they would barely brush the edges of many others. 

It's hard to remember that right now, here in this place where so much recent history began. She still doesn't know the full story, though she'd managed to drag some of it out of Anakin after their return from Kadavo, and coaxed more of it from Padmé in an effort to learn how to help her Master. It hadn't been enough, of course. Maybe nothing would have been. She doesn't dwell on might-have-beens anymore. The only way through is forward. Still, in this place, after her recent encounters on Malachor, it's hard not to see the echoes of the past rising up to ring again.

Perhaps that's what sets her on edge, or perhaps it's the Force, her ever present companion and guide, warning her to pay attention. She sits in a booth and eyes the crowd warily, bounty hunters and spacers and smugglers all bending an elbow after a long day of breaking the law. She's no better, though she still believes she serves a higher calling, that unjust laws should be broken in the pursuit of justice.

She lets out a little huff of laughter at the turn her thoughts have taken, and resolves to switch to water or caf instead of ale for her next drink.

*

A hooded creature slides into the booth across from her and she says, "I'm not looking for company." She doesn't put any Force compulsion behind it, though she will if she has to.

Hands--human, gnarled and dark from the sun, with dirt lodged under otherwise neatly trimmed fingernails--slip out from beneath sleeves and lower the hood in a quick, practiced gesture.

Ahsoka stares, shocked.

"You've grown tall," Obi-Wan says, and his voice is the same even if everything else is different.

"I've grown up," she replies. "You got old." 

"Indeed." His mouth curves into a wry, familiar smile. "I do all right."

He probably does. Age doesn't mean much to a Force user; Palpatine and Dooku were both much older and among the most dangerous beings she's ever met. And this planet weeds out the frail and the faint of heart. Not that Obi-Wan was ever either of those things.

She reaches out and curls her fingers around his; his skin is dry and thin as old leaves, and rough against hers. "What are you doing here?"

"I live here." 

She raises her brow markings and looks askance. 

Another brief smile. "Not here in the cantina. On this planet." She waits, but he doesn't elaborate. Of course he doesn't. That frustration is as familiar as his smile, though she can't say she's missed it nearly as much. "What are you doing here?"

"Had to bail out of a busted ship," she says. "This was the closest planet." She can be close-mouthed too, when necessary.

"Hmm."

"I was escaping from Malachor," she says when he doesn't say anything else. 

His fingers tighten around hers then. "Malachor?"

She shakes her head. "You don't want to know."

He laughs dryly. "You're right, I don't." He seems content to just look at her, and the scrutiny makes her sit up a little straighter, as if he's still someone she needs to impress.

"What _happened_?" she says when it's clear he's not going to say anything more.

He looks away. "Many things, Ahsoka. None of them good."

She huffs in exasperated laughter. "Still the same old Obi-Wan."

"Was I really that unbearable?" he asks, and there's a depth of sorrow in it that reverberates through to her soul.

"No," she says finally, with an emphatic shake of her head. There are charges she could lay at his feet, accusations she could make and blame he'd no doubt be happy to take up over and above whatever he's carrying now, but in the end, they are all of them who they are, who they've chosen to be, and there's no changing the past. "Or, maybe, we all were, in our ways. Too blind or foolish to see where it would lead us." She shakes her head again. "But there's no going back."

"No," he agrees. "The only way through is forward." 

She blinks at the sound of him echoing her earlier thoughts, and then wonders if perhaps it was one of his sayings that she'd been thinking of in the first place. As separate and star-crossed as they've all become, in some ways, she'll never lose the shape he and Anakin gave her in their years together during the war; she will always see her edges blur where they should be standing by her side.

"Come," he says, letting go of her hand and standing. "Let us find you a new ship so you can get off this dustball. I'm sure you have exciting things waiting for you in more welcoming climes."

She laughs for real, then, loud enough to turn heads for a moment before the crowd realizes nothing interesting is happening and turns back to their drinks.

"Oh, Obi-Wan," she says, taking his hand and letting him lead her back out into the dust and the heat, "I _have_ missed you."

"And I, you, Ahsoka," he murmurs, and the shimmering truth of it is enough to settle any lingering doubts she might have had, once, about his attachment to her, and hers to him. 

They were-- _are_ \--family, even if they'd never admitted it, and she's learned that regardless of what's happened between them, that never really goes away. She's going to enjoy this unexpected gift of time with him, knowing how unlikely it is that they'll ever meet again.

end

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] The Only Way Through](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8373556) by [KeeperofSeeds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeeperofSeeds/pseuds/KeeperofSeeds)




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